Posted by Daniel Lerner in Academy Ship Experience
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I’ll start the easy one first. I agree that Lt. (j.g.) ranks for a cadet graduated to an Academy DH should be a member rank. This is essentially putting current practice into the bylaw, and reflects how people understand it should work. It also reflects the additional responsibilities an Academy DH has, regardless of whether they are an experienced member recruited into the role or a graduated cadet.

The three-month rule is where things are a problem. For example, with one ship we mix up all speeds. A cadet can legitimately post once every 6-7 days and be an active cadet. That’s approximately 12 posts in total before graduation, which isn’t a lot of time to do much (check ins, participating in a main sim, correcting bad habits, etc).

I would really love some feedback from current and recently graduated cadets to this thread. Right now, the challenge is trying to do what we need to do in three months. The argument (which I have always supported and believed it is correct) is that it is unfair to keep cadets tied to a single ship for longer than that. But to be fair, it’s been a very, very long time since I was a cadet, and I have no idea if that is or isn’t a concern to most cadets. If it isn’t, that might change our approach.

In the meantime, assuming the three-month rule is correct, I might suggest a different approach, specifically we separate the rule of “cadets not joining other ships” from the concept of graduating. It’s a bit a of a radical change to the Academy process but one I think might be worth discussing. Specifically, what are the pros and cons of the following:

• For the first three months of a cadet’s experience, they cannot join any other ships. This allows the Academy to focus on building up the cadets’ skills, etc. and focusing on just the Academy experience.
• Ideally, at the end of the three months, the cadet is in a position to graduate.
• If a cadet is not in a position to graduate at the end of the three months, a discussion takes place with the cadet, CO (and maybe ACmdt?) and the cadet is given the option to (a) stay on the Academy ship for an additional 1-2 months and then gradute, but can also join other ships in the club in the meantime, or (b) leave the Academy ship, without the option of being noted as graduated, and can join other ships in the club. In either case, the cadet can join other ships after three months regardless of their graduation status.

It’s a different idea, anyway.

Daniel

My thoughts end up along this line too, although maybe not to this end conclusion. My thought is that cadets are restricted from joining any other ship for the first three months. At the end of that time, they are evaluated against graduation criteria (which I would like to review separately because I think there are some things on there that volunteer role-players are ill-equipped to teach, such as proper English grammar) and, if they’ve successfully met that criteria, the restriction from joining other ships is lifted, but the cadet still finishes out the sim on the ship unless they would like to leave early. They no longer count against the JO # for PDept purposes since they won’t require as much oversight, but there would have to be a limiter in place such that if the ship got really swamped, they could be removed. I think this would also benefit the ship because it could lead to a few more role-players on it since that’s more people to interact with and the new members could see the sim they had been participating in get wrapped up. :)

• Sarah, CO